A video of an apparently intoxicated passenger behaving erratically during a flight has prompted questions about how he was allowed to board. The man appears intoxicated and can be seen behaving erratically during the flight, leading some viewers to question whether his condition was noticed before he boarded.
The man's father, who appears to be much more levelheaded, can be seen trying to calm down his son. Even the flight attendants tried talking some sense into him, but whatever he drank had him unable to sit still. Later in the video, another man approached him with plastic handcuffs.
A father and son on a flight, and the son appears visibly drunk, but the flight attendant says he wasn’t served anything on board.
— Tony Lane ?? (@TonyLaneNV) August 6, 2026
So how does someone reach that level of intoxication without staff catching it before boarding?
Gate agents and TSA aren’t checking for that, and… pic.twitter.com/0Igppu27ZD
The man appears to be an adult and is responsible for his own actions. At the start of the video, the man can be seen unbuckled from his seat belt, standing up and leaning over talking to the passenger behind him.
The flight attendant even had to get his attention and scold him like a child. She said, "You're not behaving." And, just as a child would respond who knows they're in trouble, he replied, "I'm behaving. . . Yes I am." She retorted, "You're not behaving. I'm gonna call the captain, okay. Please behave."
She continued, "This is a matter of safety. . . You're an adult. Your father is here. You want to embarrass him any more? Behave." She continued telling him to behave, and he eventually sat down in his window seat. He listened to her and sat down in his window seat.
The video was being recorded by someone in the adjacent aisle, and even he called him a "drunk dumb***." After some time, his father returned to his seat beside him, and the flight attendant was speaking to both of them. She remained with the two men and continued addressing the situation.
One X user who claimed she was a flight attendant wrote this, "I was a flight attendant for many years. Most airlines have a procedure for one flight attendant from the crew to go out to pull/scan boarding passes. The passengers rush the boarding door and that FA spends mere seconds with a passenger. Meanwhile, the gate agents have little to no contact now with passengers because of the advancement of boarding passes on phones etc. However, if the gate agent has some interaction or saw someone just a little off, most times they don’t want to deal with it and just ignore any unusual behavior. They just want to close the door on time and go on their way. That’s a problem."
The former flight attendant said that, based on her experience, gate agents and flight attendants may have only brief interactions with passengers during the boarding process.
When it came to the question of responsibility, this X user wrote, "If the son is under 18, it's the father's responsibility. If he's over 18 it's the son's responsibility. The airline is not on the hook for liability since they don't have a documented SOP on checking passengers for intoxication."
Toward the end of the video, a man approaches with plastic handcuffs.It is unclear whether the man was a member of the flight crew, an air marshal or a police officer. But he approached the drunk adult son with the handcuffs to detain him. The man appeared to resist the attempt to place him in handcuffs.
The Daily Dot was unable to independently verify the circumstances surrounding the video, including the man's identity, the location of the flight or the role of the person who approached him with plastic handcuffs. The story is based on the video and accounts shared on social media.
